Notable Alumni

The alumni pictured below are just some of those whose accomplishments contribute to the I-House tradition of excellence. Our alumni include seven Nobel Laureates, governors in the US and abroad, California Supreme Court Justices, Ambassadors representing nine countries, and more than one thousand who have gone on to careers in colleges and universities around the world. Click on photos or categories to view more notable alumni and detail.

"Our greatest pleasure in those days was the folk dance evenings, where students from different, and sometimes hostile, countries danced with each other in friendship and harmony."

The annual Festival of Cultures at I-House was endowed by Coliver and is dedicated in her memory.

Maggie Gee (IH 1950-51)
Physicist at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and one of the first Chinese-American women aviators of the Women Airforce Service Pilots

Gee is the focus of the children's book, Sky High: The True Story of Maggie Gee, the story a Chinese-American girl who wanted to fly like Amelia Earhart. Maggie’s experiences sent the powerful message that ethnic minority women could break the barriers of race and gender and succeed in male-dominated occupations.

Sergio Alejo Rapu Haoa (IH 2001-03)

First native islander to serve as governor of Easter Island

"In the heart of every human being, there is a space for love, a space for peace. As long as we can respect each other's differences, we can create a bridge to reach each other's hearts."

Wendell Lipscomb (IH 1947-48)
Psychiatrist, trainer of Tuskegee Airmen and the first African American to complete residency at Kaiser Hospital

Pineda participated in the development, monitoring and implementation of the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. For these efforts he was awarded the Cal Alumni Association’s Mark Bingham for Excellence in Achievement by a Young Alumnus in 2011. Through his foundation he supports youth with disabilities at home and abroad.

"I-House instilled in me a deep understanding of humanity and inspired me to contribute my knowledge about disability and human rights with the rest of the world."

Wendy Schmidt (IH 1978-80)
President and Co-Founder of The Schmidt Family Foundation and The Schmidt Ocean Institute (SOI), earned her masters degree in journalism while residing at International House where she met her husband Eric Schmidt, Executive Chairman of Google. As a globally-minded philanthropist, Wendy oversees several strategic initiatives that advance the wiser use of our shared natural resources on land and in our oceans and seeks to resolve related human rights issues worldwide. Wendy Schmidt as International House Alumna of the Year 2014.

“ I-House meant a lot to me. It was my community, a multi-cultural one par excellence.The world needs the type of environment that I-House fosters.”

Julianne Cartwright Traylor (IH 1968-69)
First African-American woman to serve as Chair of Amnesty International

“ I-House meant a lot to me. It was my community, a multi-cultural one par excellence.The world needs the type of environment that I-House fosters.”

Khatharya Um (IH 1983-88)
Associate Professor of Asian Studies at UC Berkeley and the first Cambodian woman to earn a doctorate in the U.S.

"[At I-House], accents are as common as complaints about the menu [and] one can feel not just the freedom but the pride of wearing a sarong or a sari. These are little mundane things but they mark a world of difference for those of us who find solace in diversity and in a multifaceted environment. "

Delbert Wong (IH 1940)
First Chinese-American judge in the continental U.S.

Wong was appointed to Los Angeles Municipal Court in 1959, and served in the Superior Court for over 20 years, including five years in the Appellate Department.

Nobel Laureates

Melvin Calvin (IH 1937-38)
Recipient of the 1961 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his “research on the carbon dioxide assimilation in plants”

Owen Chamberlain (IH 1940-41)
Recipient of the 1959 Nobel Prize in Physics with Emilio Gino Segre for “their discovery of the antiproton”

Jayant Sathaye (IH 1973)
Contributor to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) which shared the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize with former vice president Al Gore, “for their efforts to build up and disseminate greater knowledge about man-made climate change, and to lay the foundations for the measures that are needed to counteract such change”

Julian Schwinger (IH 1939-40)
Recipient of the 1965 Nobel Prize in Physics, awarded jointly with Sin-Itero Tomonaga and Richard P. Feynman, “for their fundamental work in quantum electrodynamics, with deep-ploughing consequences for the physics of elementary particles.”

Glenn Seaborg (IH 1934-35 non-resident member)
Recipient of the 1951 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, awarded jointly with Edwin M. McMillan, “for their discoveries in the chemistry of the transuranium elements”

Also, Seaborg has served as University Professor of Chemistry for the University of California, Associate Director-at-Large of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory , co-founder and chairman of the Lawrence Hall of Science, and was an I-House Board member.

Kirk R. Smith (IH 1972)
Contributor to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) which shared the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize with former vice president Al Gore, “for their efforts to build up and disseminate greater knowledge about man-made climate change, and to lay the foundations for the measures that are needed to counteract such change”

Also, Smith is a member of the US National Academy of Sciences and Professor of Global Environmental Health.

Sir Geoffrey Wilkinson (IH 1946-50)

Recipient of the 1973 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, awarded jointly with Ernst Otto Fisher, “for their pioneering work…on the chemistry of the organometallic…compounds”

Ambassadors

Ali Abdullah Alireza (IH 1941)
Ambassador of Saudi Arabia to the U.S.

Martin Brennan (I-House Executive Director 2007 - 2012)
Former U.S. Ambassador to Uganda and Zambia. Interim U.S. Ambassador to Nigeria.

John Kenneth Galbraith (IH 1931-32)
Professor of Economics at Harvard, author and U.S. Ambassador to India
He first saw UC Berkeley's International House in July of 1931, when he was 22 years old, at the end of a long trip to California from his home in Guelph, Canada. The evening sun lit up the building's tan facade; Galbraith thought it a place of "unimaginable splendor." The intellectual fare was splendid too. As Galbraith recalled years later, "I experienced here an intensity of discussion beyond anything I have known since, in 60 years of public life."

Robert C.F. Gordon (IH 1939-48)
U.S. Ambassador to Mauritius

Haraldur Kroyer (IH 1941-42)
Ambassador of Iceland to the U.S.

Abdul Majid (IH 1934-40)
Ambassador of Afghanistan to U.S.

Michael Okeyo
Ambassador of Kenya to the U.S.

Andres Petricevic (IH 1963-72)
Bolivian Cabinet Member and Ambassador to the U.S.

Joao Baptista Pinheiro
Ambassador of Brazil to the U.S.

Joan Plaisted (IH 1996)
U.S. Ambassador to the Republic of the Marshall Islands

Theogene Rudasingwa (IH 2005-2006)
Ambassador to the U.S. for the Republic of Rwanda and VP of Global Affairs at the Pangaea Global AIDS Foundation

Kenneth Taylor (IH 1957-59)
Ambassador of Canada to Iran

With extensive international business experience, Ken began his career in the Canadian Foreign Service and held senior diplomatic positions around the world in a 25-year career. In 1979, while serving as the Canadian Ambassador in Iran, he helped six Americans escape from Iran during the hostage crisis—his heroic story is portrayed in the 2012 movie Argo. In addition to numerous awards and honorary doctorate degrees, Ken’s civilian honors include the United States Congressional Gold Medal and the Official Order of Canada.

Ken and his wife Dr. Patricia E. Taylor (IH 1958-60) were honored at the 2013 Gala as I-House Alumni Couple of the Year in recognition of their heroism during the 1979 Iran hostage crisis, decades of championing the values of International House in their personal and professional lives, and longstanding support of International Houses, Berkeley and New York.

Irving Tragen (IH 1943-47)
Diplomat and 2010 Citation Award winner

United Nations Staff

"International House is an institution which prepares generations of young men and women for tomorrow's world - a world characterized by interdependence in practically every field, by nations and peoples increasingly stretching their hands towards each other across oceans and frontiers, and aspiring toward a more peaceful, just, and tolerant life."

"To be exposed directly to persons that had gone through different experiences because of the kind of relationships that governments, or countries, or people had in those days—was a very much of an eye- opening experience…. [I-House] made sure we exposed ourselves to diverse cultures… and this is something that still requires a lot of continued reinforcement. "

Shankar Sastry (IH 1977-78)
Dean of the College of Engineering at UC Berkeley, and Director of the Center for Information Technology Research in the Interest of Society (CITRIS)

In October 2013 Shankar was appointed as one of two U.S. representatives on a new United Nations Scientific Advisory Board charged with strengthening "the interface between science and policy," according to Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon.

Public Service

Zulfikar Ali Bhutto (IH 1940s)
Prime Minister of Pakistan

Jerry Brown (IH 1960-61)
Governor of California, Former Mayor of Oakland and Attorney General of California.

Jeymoon Chung (IH 1955-56)
National Assemblyman and Chair of the Foreign Relations Committee of the Republic of Korea

Vernon Ehlers (IH 1956-58)
U.S. Representative of Michigan

Marcos Espinal
Executive Secretary of Stop TB Partnership

Adriana Gianturco (IH 1960-61)
Director of the California Department of Transportation and early champion of mass transit and carpool lanes"One of the high points of my life was my year at I House in l960-196l! "

Pyoung Hoon Kim ( IH 1956-57 and 1991-92)
Senior Protocol Secretary to the President of the Republic of Korea"Living here is where I learned to interface with people from other cultures, to understand their concerns, to read faces. If you want to be a diplomat, live in I-House. What I learned here, you can't learn in school. I-House is an experiment that works."

Oona King (IH 1989-90)
Member of Parliament, U.K.

Tetsuo Kondo (IH 1954-55)
Minister of Labor, Japan

Wissanu Kreangam (IH 1970)

Deputy Prime Minister of Thailand

Robey Lal (IH 1967-68)
International Air Transport Association (IATA) country manager for India

Business

Moshe H. Alafi (1949-50)
Mr. Alafi
has been called one of the founders of biotechnology, as he was one of the first venture capitalists to see the exciting potential in biotechnology. Mr. Alafi has been an active investor for over 25 years and was a seed investor in Cetus, Biogen, Applied Biosystems, and Amgen. He has founded over 60 companies throughout his career.

Simon Lewis OBE (IH 1981-82)
CEO, Association for Financial Markets in Europe (AFME)
Also, former Director of Communications for former Prime Minister Gordon Brown, Communications Secretary to the Queen, Visiting Fellow at Oxford University and Fulbright Scholar.
is the chief executive of the Association for Financial Markets in Europe.

Lewis was awarded an OBE in the 2014 New Year Honours List for public service and services to international education through the Fulbright Commission.

Andre Manoliu (IH 1974-76)
Managing Director, GrowthPlans, LLC

Hans Rausing (IH 1948-49)
Chairman, TetraPak

Arun Sarin (IH 1975-78)
CEO, Vodafone

"Since the world is turning into a smaller and smaller global marketplace, we need to have these very comfortable relationships across cultures. Each culture needs to be respected...each culture needs to have empathy...that's what the I-House taught me professionally."

Law

Upendra Baxi (IH 1965)
Professor of Law and Vice Chancellor at the University of Delhi; Vice Chancellor at the University of South Gujarat, Surat; and President of the Indian Society of International Law

Rose Bird (IH 1960-61)
Chief Justice of the California Supreme Court

Barnet Cooperman (IH 1946-47)
Judge on the L.A. Superior Court

"Because of International House I met my wife of 61 years, and we appreciated I-House and the enriching environment that shaped lifelong friendships and our family of five beautiful children."

Wolfgang Hoffman-Riem (IH 1964-65)
German legal scholar, Professor Emeritus at the University of Hamburg, former judge of the Federal Constitutional Court of Germany and Recipient of the 2008 Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany

Adrian Kragen (IH 1930-33)
Deputy attorney general of California under Earl Warren and Professor of Law at UC Berkeley

George Kraw (IH 1972-76)
Member of the Advisory Committee of the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation

"I attribute tremendous positive value to my stay in I-House. It helped me to adjust to the life in a country which is now my own but which was then a foreign country to me, and I formed at that time associations and friendships which have lasted since those days."

Literature and Journalism

"At I-House, I began to understand that the hatreds on which we had grown up were left far behind us, and that here at I-House, we could see one another as individuals, as people, as warm and caring human beings. For all of us, I-House was a unique place, which would forever stay in our hearts and minds."

Marianne Likowski Alireza (IH 1941-43)
Author of At the Drop of a Veil, an autobiographical account of her International House romance with Ali Abdullah Alireza, leading to the first marriage between a Saudi man and a western woman

Angelika Blendstrup (IH 1970-72)
Business communications consultant and author of They Made It! How Chinese, French, German, Indian, Israeli and other foreign born entrepreneurs contributed to high tech innovation in the Silicon Valley, the U.S. and Overseas

Arlene Blum (IH 1967-68)
Arlene has played a groundbreaking role in women's mountaineering and is best known for leading the first all-women's ascent of Annapurna. Blum also led the first women's team up Mt. McKinley; was the first American woman to attempt Mt. Everest; and has played a leading role in more than 20 mountain expeditions worldwide. Author of Annapurna: A Woman's Place , and Breaking Trail: A Climbing Life

David Brock (IH 1973-82)
Author of Blinded by the Right: The Conscience of an Ex-Conservative

Sandy Close (IH 1961-64)
Executive Director, Pacific News Service

Richard H. Dillon (IH 1946-49)
Author of many books on American history including award-winning Meriwether Lewis: A Biography, North American Indian Wars, Napa Valley Natives, and Captain John Sutter: Sacramento Valley's Sainted Sinner

"I remember my years at I-House as among the happiest of my life. I-House became a base for my first real exploration of my native state, thanks to the kindness of individuals like Doug Powell, Doug Negi, Tad Mori, and Tak Yamamoto. That is what I remember most - kindness and camaraderie. Probably, simple incidents like these led me to change my field of study from Latin American history to American history."

Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni (IH 1978-79)
International House's 2008 Alumna of the Year and author of several books including The Mistress of Spices and Sister of My Heart.

"Living
at I-House made me sensitive to the
challenges people face when living in
a different country and how it changes
people, makes them grow. These are
major themes in my work."

Firoozeh Jazayeri Dumas (IH 1986-87) Author of Funny in Farsi: A Memoir of Growing up Iranian in America and Laughing Without an Accent

Ms. Dumas was honored in 2009 as Alumnus of the Year for her efforts to promote understanding of Iranian culture and for reminding us – through her books, speaking tours, NPR commentaries, and articles – that our commonalities far outweigh our differences. Full story from IH Times Spring 2009 (pdf)

"My experience at I-House confirmed what I already knew: our commonalities far outweigh our differences. It is in places such as International House that we learn to see beyond nationalities, borders, and religions and see instead our shared humanity. It is the only recipe for world peace."

Markos Kounalakis (IH 1977-78)
President and publisher of Washington Monthly

Harold Gilliam (IH 1941-42)
Environmental columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle and author of The San Francisco Experience and Weather of the San Francisco Bay Region

Ved MehtaNew Yorker staff writer for more than 30 years and author of several books including his autobiographical work, Face to Face describing his childhood and his early struggle with blindness. Author of Walking the Indian Streets, Portrait of India, Sound and Shadows of the New World, and The Stolen Light, All for Love, Dark Harbor, and The Red Letters.

Gustav Olivercrona (IH 1946-52)
Swedish television commentator

Donna Rosenthal (IH 1968-70)
Author of The Israelis: Ordinary People in an Extraordinary Land

Robbie Clipper Sethi (IH 1973-74)
Author of Fifty-Fifty, a celebration of diversity's complexities told through the story of a Punjabi family

Edmundo Paz Soldan (IH 1991-93)
Author of The Matter of Desire

Dick Wilson (IH 1950s)
Author of more than 20 books about Asia including They Changed India

"The I-House year was a high point in our early lives when we did not have to learn internationalism because we lived it every day."

Arts and Entertainment

Yoshi Akiba (IH 1973)
Founder of Yoshi's Jazz Club and Japanese Restaurant in the Bay Area

"Because of I-House I learned that my life would be about connecting with other people."

Dietrich von Bothmer (IH 1940)
Curator of Greek and Roman Art, Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City

"The day I arrived in Berkeley, January 18, 1940, is engraved in my mind. I remember the extraordinary spirit of friendship that prevailed in difficult times."

Tshewang Dendup
Star of Travelers and Magicians, a film shot in Bhutan which explores the appeal of Western glamour versus traditional ways

Wilton Dillon (IH 1949-50)
Senior Scholar Emeritus at the Smithsonian

Charles Ferguson (IH 1973)
Director and producer of the Academy Award-winning documentary Inside Job and the Academy Award-nominated No End In Sight: The American Occupation of Iraq. Charles Ferguson is International House's 2011 Alumnus of the Year.

Yoshiko Kakudo (IH 1961-62)
Curator of Japanese Arts, de Young Museum of San Francisco

Education

Helmer Aslaksen (IH 1982-85)
Professor of Mathematics, National University of Singapore

"My three years at I-House were the best years of my life. It was both the perfect introduction to the best of American culture, and an unparalleled exposure to parts of the world that I had only dreamt of before. After I-House I feel welcome and comfortable everywhere in the world!"

John Bahcall (IH 1953-56)
Professor of Natural Science at the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton, President Emeritus of the American Astronomical Society, and 1999 recipient of the National Medal of Science, the U.S.'s highest science award

Gavan Butler (IH 1965)
Political Economy Professor at the University of Sydney and member of the Senate of the University

James Cason (IH 1933-35)
Professor of Chemistry and Dean of the College of Chemistry, UC Berkeley

Yohannes Haile-Selassie (IH 1995-96)
Ethiopian paleontologist and leader of the archeological team that discovered "Lucy's great-grandfather," a fossil 400,000 years older than Lucy

Also, Director of Anthropology at the Cleveland Museum of Natural History and adjunct professor at Case Western Reserve University

John Heilbron (IH 1956-58)
Professor of History and Vice Chancellor, UC Berkeley

Wolf Homburger (IH 1950-51)
Director of the Institute of Transportation Studies at UC Berkeley and author of a number of transportation textbooks including Fundamentals of Traffic Engineering and Introduction to Transportation Engineering. Homburger met his wife, Arlene Levinson, at I-House and dedicated the South I-House Cafe Terrace in her memory.

Paulo J.M. Monteiro (IH 1980-84)
Roy W. Carlson Distinguished Professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at UC Berkeley, and the 2007 recipient of the Global Research Partnership Award from King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST)

Gerhard G. Mueller (IH 1954-57)

Mueller is best known for his work in the area of international accounting education, with contributions that have spanned many areas of accountancy teaching, research, consulting and professional service. During his career, he has been a professor, worked in industry and CPA firms, served on the Financial Accounting Standards Board, and won numerous awards, including the American Accounting Association’s Outstanding Educator Award and similar national awards from the American Institute of CPAs and Beta Alpha Psi.

M. Ishaq Nadiri (IH 1958-59)
Professor of Economics at NYU, and former Senior Economic Advisor to President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan

"I-House was an experience of being part of the human family with all of its variety, intriguing complexity, and wonder."

A. Richard Newton (IH 1975-76)
Dean of the College of Engineering, UC Berkeley

"I developed many, many friendships while I lived at I-House. In many ways, it is the development of these deeper understandings and these deeper friendships with people from around the world that this House is really all about."

Karl Pister (IH 1943-45 Callaghan Hall Resident)
Dean of the College of Engineering at UC Berkeley, Chancellor of UC Santa Cruz, and 2007 recipient of the Clark Kerr Award for Distinguished Leadership in Higher Education by the Berkeley Division of the Academic Senate

Alison Dundes Renteln (IH 1983)
Director of the Jesse M. Unruh Institute of Politics at the University of Southern California, and author of The Cultural Defense

Roger Revelle (IH 1930-31)
Professor and Director of Scripps Institution of Oceanography and advocate for the establishment of UC San Diego

Marion Ross (IH 1947-51)
Professor of Economics Emerita and Dean of the Faculty at Mills College

Ross's extensive service to I-House includes her roles as Chief Financial Officer, Chair of the Finance Committee and member of the Board of Directors. She co-founded the Rafael Rodriguez/Golden Age Scholarship endowment which provides full room and board scholarships plus a stipend.
"It was shortly after the end of World War II. Students came to I-House as veterans, resistance fighters, and Holocaust survivors. I think of Lottie, the only one of her family to survive the concentration camps, and Milton, who hiked at night from Tientsin to southern China to enlist in the American army and was later dropped behind enemy lines to gather intelligence. Great friendships were formed. I found here a spirit of optimism and a sense of rebuilding a world for peace."

Urvashi Sahni (IH 1994)
Education reformer in India and recipient of the 2000 Haas International Award

Shankar Sastry (IH 1977-78)
Dean of the College of Engineering at UC Berkeley, and Director of the Center for Information Technology Research in the Interest of Society (CITRIS)

Shankar was recently appointed as one of two U.S. representatives on a new United Nations Scientific Advisory Board charged with strengthening "the interface between science and policy," according to Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon.

Robin Sharwood (IH 1955-56)
Executive Director of the Victorian Law Foundation, and Professor of Law at University of Melbourne, Australia

Hla Shwe (IH 1953-62)
Professor of Physics, UC Davis, and President of International House Davis Board of Directors